Main Junction: [Closed] ASK WHITECHAPEL -- the You Can Haz Help Now thread (Closes 10th September)

It sounds a little heartless, but you always have to take care of yourself first. Not "instead"... just "first". You put on your oxygen mask before you put on your child's. You get out of the icy water before trying to pull someone else out. Et cetera.

Hey Ian you were terrifically vague in your request. Anything beautiful and true. But you didn't say what sources are preferable, what sources are not acceptable. Given this is Whitechapel, odds are you're not terribly into the Christian thing, but hey, I don't know you so... there's always 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 - the "Love is patient and kind" passage that's been a big hit at many a wedding. (I wouldn't just because it's So Overused, but...I don't know you.)

Maybe be more specific. What's your theme? What brought you and your fiance together? What poets/singers/writers (comic or novel) do you both love?

#audiovideoontheInternetThis may be a multi-step situation. I get the distinct feeling that our home ISP sucks balls since both my brother and I have trouble watching videos online (primarily YouTube and Hulu). They hitch and stutter and often freeze for minutes at a time. Admittedly, my laptop is a piece of crap. Despite using Chrome, I've never had a Web site load super zippy fast like the commercials promised. But my brother has a behemoth machine with nigh endless RAM for his video games.

I've tried doing a speed test but so much time passed without anything happening I gave up. I don't know if it's my machine or the connection. BTW when I check the connection icon in the lower right corner it most typically gives the speed as max (56Mbps) and Excellent signal strength. Occasionally this falls apart. But, aggravatingly, I'll have the video problems while the signal will insist it is perfect.

WTH? No one can give me any useful information. The ISP - DSLExtreme - has just lame customer service. They insisted their signal is fine so it must be my computer. Or we should get a new router - even though our router IS new. Friends with some computer skillz don't want to deal with connectivity issues. I don't want to call some random tech person who'll charge $60+ per hour without being able to first pinpoint the problem.

CAn anyone help? Any info is good. I've poked around online but my lack of computer know how is proving a limitation.

Ok... reviews of DSLExtreme (that I finally found after a bit of fighting with the signal that suddenly slowed to a crawl) are largely bad. Many notes crap service, unacceptably slow access - oh and ripping people off for more money.

So um. Any recommendations for other providers - need to be available in US/California of course. HAve heard a couple things about Fios and many bad things about Time Warner and Comcast. Who have you found reliable?

2. By the light of your screen, record a video with sound of yourself saying the word "shame". You can say it, whisper it, scream it, smile with it, cry with it, whatever. For preference keep your head roughly central on the screen but I'm not fussy here. Minimal background noise is also preferable. Having a lot of white on your screen will help make enough light.

3. Send it to me at bath_toaster@hotmail.com. Use a service like mailbigfile.com for convenience.

4. Be cool with what I make them all into. By sending me the above you and all your heirs, vassals and livestock agree to release all copyright claim on it and anything that I make out of it in perpetuity and promise not to get arsey about it later on, no matter how annoying you may come to find me. I'm intending to make it into a music video and probably put it up on my own site under a creative commons license.

5. Oh alright, it's a song about social media. You're familiar with the axiom that if you're not paying for a service then you're the product being sold? That. It's called I Am Your Gloved Hand.

So a friend of mine who lives in an apartment in Massachusetts has been receiving postal mail addressed to a woman who does not and never has lived there. This woman has been coming around and collecting said mail, from her box, on a daily basis. The mail has been a lot of fairly alarming looking stuff, like letters from Children and Family Services.

The speculation is that this woman is running some kind of scam. Many schools in the area require you to show proof of residency. my friend is a woman who lives alone with a young child, and is rather frightened about the whole thing. she has had some confrontations with the woman, who basically said "Fuck off, I have an agreement with the landlord.". She doesn't, but the landlord doesn't give a crap and won't do anything.

I have advised her to do the following:- Put a note on her mailbox that says "Mail for listed residents only, all others return to sender."- Call the post office and complain about possible mail fraud- File a police report for trespassing and interfering with mail

Thanks for responding, you're right, I was extremely vague... in truth, I'm seeking inspiration anywhere I can get it.

I'm a huge geek, atheist, film fanatic, gamer (and games developer), comic book reader and writer my fiance isn't any of those things, a down to earth accountant who is kind of despairing of the fact I know more about, I don't know, Gerry Anderson TV shows than I do about, let's say... tax codes. She's my best friend in the whole world.

I've been looking for something I wouldn't expect in that context, beautiful words that will be heard and understood by quite a broad audience of our quite traditional families and collected and extremely diverse friends.

I've exhausted all the obvious web recommendations for readings, which I figured I would, while simultaneously working through everywhere else I can think of:

Poetry. I'm not a poetry enthusiast as such, my favourite poet is Bukowksi (so I was always onto a loser there), although I find many of Shakespeare's Sonnets quite beautiful, they're either too familiar or, just not right. I've looked through any number of modern poets I can find via googling but everything feels like it would come across slightly glib, or slightly pretentious on the day.

Music. I was quite keen on "I Say a Little Prayer For you" by Aretha Franklin, which amongst other things is a really beautiful expression of day-to-day love, but it has a slightly desperate quality which didn't quite fit. Elsewhere in the ceremony I'm playing "Songs of Love" by the Divine Comedy, as well as "Love song for a Vampire" by Annie Lennox (hoping no one listens too closely to the lyrics), to give you some idea of my own tastes in these things, but again, this avenue has failed me.

Film and TV. Man, from trawling Woody Allen, through Breakfast at Tiffany's via, well, anything else that seemed vaguely suitable, Juno's dad's monologue about finding the right person is sweet (and is still a standby), and all manner of bits of TV... jeez, Sex and City, Friends.

Literature. This area has failed me the most, I've got nothing, I read a lot of Sci-Fi, crime fiction, pulps, noir... no joy.

I'm seeking inspiration, if you've read or heard anything which speaks to you of romance and lasting love, anything which might point me somewhere I haven't looked, I'd appreciate it.

#comicsso where do you guys go to talk comics anymore online? this board is honestly all but dead for my purposes...in its heyday there was all sorts of comics and music stuff that was mostly warren driven, and well, you see how it is now

#audiovideoontheinternetGlasnost indicates there is no traffic shaping going on. But there does seem to be noise on the line. What does that mean and what can be done about it? Speedtest.net gives download speed at 0.3. This sucks.

For discussions about making comics, SequentialWorkshop.com is where it's at for me. It's the successor to Panel & Pixel, which was the creator-focused successor to Warren's The Engine, and maintains a similar spirit of motivated professionalism.

To be honest, I'm too busy drawing these days to even do much reading, let alone talk about it, so I can't help you there.

Balls. Reviews I've found on DSL Extreme nearly all denounce it and give big time warnings of their shitty customer services and predatory practices, seems they try to take even more money once a contract is cancelled.

I have been wondering what legal issues there are when republishing short stories that have earlier been somehwere else, but which haven't been actually commissioned. A case in point, my story was one of the winners of Campaign for Real Fear a couple of years back, and it got published in Black Static magazine - are there any legal obstacles for offering the story to an anthology later? My intuition says that unless you have signed some kind of an exclusive deal, there shouldn't be problems, but quite often laws don't work intuitively...

Your intuition is correct here. [Insert international law variation disclaimer here, but...] The copy right is yours, and unless you signed a contract granting someone exclusive rights to the work, you're free to exercise those rights however you wish. The folks you're submitting the work to should be told that it was previously published, however; some anthology editors don't like sloppy seconds.

Yes, but you won't find much. I've seen them at trading card game shops but it was just some Marvel and DC stuff, mostly Marvel for that specific shop. I've found stuff at old thrift stores. Bookstore might have them but I can't recall. I know I've seen them around but there's really not much of a pattern to them. Supermarkets pretty much only carry magazines and romance novels, and I haven't been to a newsstand if forever, but i can't check the next time I pass one. Incidentally, my first comic ever was purchased from a Newsstand in Mexico.